Four Countries Removed From FATF’s NCCT List

The Financial Action Task Force has removed Dominica, the Marshall Islands, Niue and Russia from its NCCT list in light of the progress these countries have made in improving their anti-money laundering systems. The FATF has said it will continue to monitor closely future developments in delisted jurisdictions, and will review again the situation of each remaining NCCT at its next Plenary meeting on 12-14 February 2003.

In October 2001, FATF took a leading role in developing Eight Special Recommendations on Terrorist Financing, as well as initiating a global self-assessment process for countries to assess themselves against these standards. The FATF is very pleased that more than 120 countries in the world have participated in the self-assessment exercise on terrorist financing. This exercise has helped FATF to identify countries for priority technical assistance by the IMF, World Bank, and United Nations to improve their anti-terrorist financing systems of those countries. The FATF issued best practices guidelines to help prevent non-profit organisations from being misused by terrorists. It also issued for public consultation, aninterpretative note concerning the abuse of wire transfers.

In a release today, the FATF said it was pleased to announce that it will collaborate with the IMF and the World bank on an important initiative in the international fight against money laundering and the financing of terrorism. After having endorsed the FATF 40 and 8 Recommendations, the IMF, World Bank and the FATF have developed in recent months a common methodology to assess the countries in the world in compliance with the FATF Recommendations. To this end, this methodology will be used by the FATF, the IMF and the World Bank.

The FATF also reported on an international Forum with representatives of the private sector to discuss a range of issues being considered as FATF reviews its Forty Recommendations. FATF expects to complete that review during the first half of 2003. At the conclusion of this review, FATF will issue updated Recommendations.